IF - forward

This forward moving horse is one of my illustrations for the fairy tale 'The Golden Hero Dragan', the original running into the opposite direction.

Instinctively I thought that forward would usually mean to go from left to right (though in the above mentioned book it works the other way round). That left me wondering why this should be so. Does it depend on the writing direction one is accustomed to which in Latin writing goes from left to right? Does that mean on the other hand that people who are writing right-to-left (as with Hebrew and Arabian) or not only right-to-left but top-to-bottom (as with some Asian scripts) read this illustration differently? So maybe illustration is not globally readable after all?